{"id":2815,"date":"2021-10-24T15:35:14","date_gmt":"2021-10-24T15:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martinemussies.nl\/web\/?p=2815"},"modified":"2021-10-24T15:54:24","modified_gmt":"2021-10-24T15:54:24","slug":"misrepresentations-of-female-autism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/martinemussies.nl\/web\/misrepresentations-of-female-autism\/","title":{"rendered":"(mis)representations of female autism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At a nightclub, a man offers a pretty blond woman a drink. She has obviously shown interest in him, but turns the drink down. He is confused – was she not interested? She then approaches him, frankly tells him that she’s not thirsty\u2026<\/strong> and invites him to have sex in her house. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

She thereby rejects the social nicety of accepting the drink and jumps straight to the point. After they have sex together, the woman simply rolls over and goes to sleep, wasting no time with polite small talk, and after her nap, she nonchalantly opens up her laptop and starts viewing graphic crime scene photos right next to him. He wakes up, shocked, and asks \u201cwhat the hell is that?\u201d She matter of factly answers, \u201cit\u2019s a corpse,\u201d and then continues examining the bloody pictures. He awkwardly gets up to leave, and she simply says, \u201cbye, thanks,\u201d and goes back to work. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As soon as the crime series The Bridge<\/em><\/a> (aka Bron\/Broen) introduces Swedish detective Saga Nor\u00e9n<\/a>, it\u2019s clear that she doesn’t abide by social conventions. As the discussion on \u2018neurodiversity\u2019 in entertainment gathers steam, it is easy to identify Saga and a handful of other female characters from television shows and series as \u201cbeing on the spectrum\u201d. Autistic women are, however, still underrepresented in television. When representation does occur, for me as an autistic person, it is still often narrow and feels unrealistic. One of the reasons for this is that, since most research on autism spectrum disorder is male-focused, symptoms are defined in relation to men (Van Wijngaarden-Cremers et al. 2014<\/a>), which leads to what I call \u201cfake autism\u201d on TV. To illustrate this, I will analyse Saga’s behaviour and compare it to other (supposedly) autistic female detectives on TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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